Michael Gove's education white paper puts teachers at the heart of its plans – and teacher education and development at the heart of what it says about teachers.

The current structure of teacher education is complex. About 80% of teachers are trained through formal partnerships between schools and universities, in which students spend up to 75% of their time being trained in schools by experienced teachers. Universities manage the system – admissions, quality assurance, progression, pastoral support and advice, and subject knowledge. Schools use extended practice to develop skills. About 15% of teachers are trained on employment-based routes – but the biggest employment-based programmes are themselves run by universities working with schools. The remainder are trained in school-led consortia, though these are often very small and unstable – dependent on the enthusiasm of individual senior staff. The white paper, then, is set in a very complex environment – and it is often confusing for potential teachers.

The quality of teacher education is high. Ofsted has called the current generation of teachers "the best trained ever", and this week's report from the chief inspector of schools is clear that more outstanding practice is found in university-led partnerships than in other provision.

Teacher education and training needs to develop a complex range of skills, dispositions and knowledge. Schools need outstanding teachers – teachers who are well trained, well motivated and well supported. There are two ways of getting teachers like this: one is to rely on luck – depending on enough people of the right quality choosing to become teachers. The more reliable and sensible way is to build a system that produces them. The evidence from across the world is that such a system depends on schools and universities working together: universities provide access to up-to-date research, offer a convenient way of recruiting large numbers of graduates and provide an infrastructure. Schools – whose main job, after all, is teaching pupils – provide opportunities for experience and classroom-based professional learning.

The white paper is both an opportunity and a threat to this system. If – as some readings suggest – it proposes replacing the current system with a fractured set of arrangements in which schools are left to recruit, train and develop their own teachers then evidence and experience would suggest that the result will be to run risks with teacher recruitment and to produce highly variable quality.

There is, however, an opportunity. We know a good deal about what really world-class teacher education looks like. It develops teacher education as a partnership between universities and the best schools in which highly qualified professionals draw on research about effective practices, research about how children learn and a subject and pedagogic knowledge base. It is both academic and practical. Like good medical practice, it involves developing and implementing cognitive attributes and emotional literacy. It can be developed where universities and good schools collaborate and draw on their different strengths. If the white paper allows networks of the best schools to work with successful university departments, it may well provide a way of closing some of the often arbitrary gaps in the current system.

Which future the teaching profession faces now depends on several things: the commitment of the secretary of state, the funding arrangements he puts in place, and the imagination of headteachers and academics. The right choice and we can move towards the world's best.